Apple opening bigger Bellevue store, but what about downtown Seattle?

Apple plans to open a bigger retail store at Bellevue Square this Saturday, moving to a new location in the mall. They’re hosting a grand reopening ceremony on Saturday at 9:30 a.m., giving away T-shirts to the first 1,000 guests. (What, no Miley Cyrus tickets like when Microsoft opened its store at the mall?)

The new store will be in a different location, presumably no longer within spitting distance of the Microsoft store which opened in 2010. An Apple representative declined to tell us exactly where the new store is located, so I guess you’ll have the joy of wandering the mall on Saturday morning trying to find it. Redmond Patch speculates that it could be next to Papyrus where renovation work is ongoing. (Update: We’re told the store will be at 213 Bellevue Square, up one floor and to the left of the current location).

Anyway, all of this chatter about a new Apple store, got me wondering: When is Apple going to open in downtown Seattle? The iPad and iPhone maker already has a store at University Village, located across the parking lot from the Microsoft Store.

But we’ve heard rumblings for months now that Apple has been scouting locations in the downtown core. One real estate source tells us that Apple is considering space in Westlake Center, where Nordstrom Rack moved to much fanfare earlier this year.

Stay tuned. Apple fanboys and fangirls in the “206” may just have to keep hitting the University Village store for a bit longer.

John Cook is GeekWire's co-founder and editor, a veteran reporter and the longest-serving journalist on the Pacific Northwest tech startup beat. Follow him @johnhcook and email john@geekwire.com.

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Comments

Guest

We expect to see Apple Downtown West in the space Nordstrom Rack vacated after their move to Westlake Center. That’s a very large space, so we’d advise that they wait until standalone Apple TV is available before opening Apple Downtown West.

blogs….

so you liiiiikaaaa the standalone Apple TV do yaaaaaaa!?

http://eyejot.com/users/davidg davidgeller

I heard that it was going to be upstairs too, which struck me as odd. I thought a ground-floor location would get a bunch more foot traffic. I guess we will wait to see in a few days…

Kelly Refredon

The old store in BellSquare had a bad BO smell. But I don’t care to visit the new one anyway as I am so sick of Apple. And no, I don’t work at Microsoft.

a

Completely agree. That store had such a bad stench to it I could barely stand to be in there for more than 30 seconds.

Whiteguy21

a bad Barack Obama smell? That is the whole country right now.
Hurry! Scream “RACIST!” at the top of your lungs.

NWCommenter

The new store rocks… I dunno what your problem is.

http://twitter.com/topscientist Top Scientist

Uh, it in fact will be within spitting distance. The location directly overlooks the Microsoft store, on the next floor up. You could literally spit on the Microsoft store from the new Apple one. How is it possible you don’t know this?

Harkonnen

Downtown has horrible parking and is unsafe. Can you imagine navigating your way through the area with your brand new Apple TV…? I’ll stick with U-Village or Bellevue.

Guest

Fret not. We expect to keep the U-Village and Bellevue stores open so that those uncomfortable with urban environments will still be able to purchase standalone Apple TV.

Harkonnen

LOL – thank you! That was funny. Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to head over to visit the Romney’s…

anonymous

It’s funny, the U Village and Bellevue Square stores have acres of parking around them, yet I never go those places, because it would require me to get in a car and go way out of my way. If there was a place downtown, I would walk by it probably every day. Also, anyone that says downtown Seattle is unsafe must be extremely timid. This is one of the safest big cities in America.

jim

don’t expose your knife

http://twitter.com/iC cliveb

How about an Glass Apple kiosk in downtown to pickup a forgotten Macbook power supply / replacement iPhone…

http://www.blockbeta.com Robbin Block

I don’t consider downtown unsafe, but the parking situation limits it to customers who work there.

CATFACE T-SHIRT

It has been common knowledge for over a year that Apple is moving to a larger location on the second level and will be able to look down on the MS store (it has even been in news reports). The new location is a merging of three previous retail tenants. Hopefully with a larger space people will not feel so crowded and the body oder will not be as noticeable. Of course it would help if the hipsters washed a little bit more often. It would also help if the mall security made an effort to keep out the trophy dogs that can be seen walking around or being carried around all the time.

I agree with John Cook, where is the downtown Apple location? I would love to see one in some downtown location (Westlake, Pacific Place, South Lake Union). Let’s hope Apple has been watching and reading this :)